So, you may remember that last week I posted about trying to decide what book to suggest to my friend, who asked for a recommendation. By the end of that post I’d narrowed my choices down to these four:
- Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
- The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
By the end of that post I’d pretty much convinced myself not to recommend The Sparrow. And after that post I found out that he’s already read Ready Player One. That left me with two choices.
All last week I was pretty torn between Blue Remembered Earth and The Dog Stars. The first is actual science-based sci-fi, and the start of a multi-generational space opera. The second is what, up to this point, I had considered to be the best post-apocolyptic fiction book I’ve read — mostly because I found it to be believably realistic and yet also hopeful.
But last week I started reading Station Eleven… I haven’t finished it yet, but so far, I think of the two books, Station Eleven will maybe nudge out The Dog Stars as best post-apocolyptic fiction book I’ve read. So, I could recommend Station Eleven instead… but now we’re back to the problem I had with The Sparrow… both of those books are getting a TON of hype right now and I don’t really want to recommend something that he’d be likely to read on his own without me pointing it out to him.
Honestly, any of these books I’ve mentioned would be a good choice. And it’s just so hard for me to pick only one “best” book. But, when it comes down to it, I keep coming back to one book… I think it’s going to have to be: Blue Remembered Earth.
There are just so many things about that book that I love. The elephants. The technology. The moon colony. The fighting robots. And more stuff I won’t say for fear of spoiling it… It’s such a richly imagined story. I really hope he likes it as much as I do.
EMM Blogs 